From My Email With Love

FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 1, 2008

I was at a coffeehouse the other day and overheard a conversation between a father and his son. The son, who appeared to be home from college, asked his dad, "Do you think there will be peace in the Middle East?" The father put down his paper and said, "You can't get along with your mother, how do you expect the Palestinians and the Israelis to get along?"

After a good laugh, I got to thinking how wise and profound that simple statement was. It's easy to get behind a cause or a political figure or a movement but perhaps causes and political figures and movements would be more effective if we got behind the most important cause of all - creating peace between me and everybody in my life.

The Kabbalists' solution to peace in the world is to address the root cause of fragmentation and separation in the world:

Our own intolerant behavior towards one another.

Picture this: you wake up in a bad mood. Rather than be the loving husband, mother, or father you normally are, you are a little grumpy. When someone asks you to pass the butter, you chuck it. Dairy products, when mishandled, can easily ruin someone's day. When you finally get out of house and on the expressway, you are a little aggressive. Cutting someone off on the road can easily ruin someone's day. You get to the office, you're in a meeting, and a junior colleague is pushing a proposal that goes against your own. You shut him down with a roll of your eyes and a cutting remark. Lowering someone else's self esteem can easily ruin someone's day.

I can go on but I think you get the point. It's basic math:

one angry person + one happy person = two angry people.

If you are going to be intolerant or judgmental or cynical or sarcastic (pent up anger that is misdirected) you can't ask "Why me?" when others treat you with the same bag of tricks, or when the world at large is spinning off its axis.

This week, I think it behooves each and every one of us to examine our own behavior, and to decide to put a ban on the weapons we use in our daily lives. These weapons being our negative words and misbehaviors.

Once we can all look at our daily lives and see we are making leaps and bounds in the way of accepting others' beliefs, opinions and behaviors, only then can we expect to see tribes and nations treating one another with tolerance and human dignity.

All the best,

Yehuda

72 Name of the Week




Just as the light of a bulb banishes darkness from a room, conflict on every scale — between people arguing about a parking space, or between nations arguing about an oil field — is brought to a peaceful end through the Light of this Name.

(source: The Kabbalah Centre)

Me: It's not about being perfect, it's about being better - and this helps me learn to be better.